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Fish versus PowerAn Environmental History of the

Fraser River

Matthew D. EvendenUniversity of British Columbia

v



published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridgeThe Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

cambridge university pressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia

Ruiz de Alarcon 13, 28014 Madrid, SpainDock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

http://www.cambridge.org

C© Matthew D. Evenden 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004

Printed in the United States of America

Typeface Sabon 11/13 pt. System LATEX 2ε [TB]

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Evenden, Matthew D. (Matthew Dominic), 1971–

Fish versus power : an environmental history of the Fraser River /Matthew D. Evenden.

p. cm. – (Studies in environment and history)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

ISBN 0-521-83099-0

1. Fishery conservation – British Columbia – Fraser River – History.2. Pacific salmon fisheries – British Columbia – Fraser River – History.

3. Fraser River (B.C.) – Environmental conditions – History.4. Hydroelectric power plants – Environmental aspects.

I. Title. II. Series.

SH224.B6E83 2004333.95′616′097113 – dc22 2003059632

ISBN 0 521 83099 0 hardback

vi



Contents

List of Tables, Figures, Photographs, and Maps page ix

List of Abbreviations xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

1. “A Rock of Disappointment” 19

2. Damming the Tributaries 53

3. Remaking Hells Gate 84

4. Pent-Up Energy 119

5. The Power of Aluminum 149

6. Fish versus Power 179

7. The Politics of Science 231

Conclusion 267

Bibliography 277

Index 299

ix



Tables, Figures, Photographs,and Maps

Tables

1. Fraser River Sockeye Catches on the Big-Year Cycle,1901–33 page 46

2. Central Station Groups, 1942 1263. Comparative Electrical Costs and Domestic

Consumption for Systems of Equal Size in BC andOntario, 1942 127

4. The Growth of Fish–Power Fisheries ResearchMeasured by Project Starts 245

5. Research Institutions and Cooperative Projects 246

Figures

1. BCER mainland power production (in kilowatt hours),1905–28 65

2. “Fish Travel Modern Highway” 1143. “The Future Fraser River” 187

Photographs

1. Hells Gate, ca. 1867 222. “Rockslide, Fraser River at Hells Gate” 273. Sockeye Salmon in Spuzzum Creek, August 1913 294. Clearing the Gate, 1914 33

xi



xii Tables, Figures, Photographs, and Maps

5. Opening of the tunnel connecting Coquitlam andBuntzen Lakes 61

6. Dr. William Ricker at Hells Gate, 1938 857. Tagged sockeye salmon from the Hells Gate

investigations 92

Maps

1. Fraser Basin and British Columbia 62. Hells Gate and the landslides 253. The Fraser Canyon, ca. 1916 264. Lower-basin dam projects 575. Flooding in the Fraser Valley, 1948 1436. The Alcan project 1717. The Columbia River projects 1818. Transmission networks in BC, 1958 1909. Fraser Basin Board power site investigations, 1958 224

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Introduction

In the twentieth century, humans transformed the planet’s rivers.On every continent, save Antarctica, they dammed, diverted, anddepleted rivers. On local, regional, and continental levels, the path-ways and uses of water changed, if not always in kind, then inintensity, location, and scale. Two ecologists, Mats Dynesius andChrister Nilsson, reported in the closing decade of the twentiethcentury that over three-quarters of the total water discharge ofthe 139 largest rivers in the Northern Hemisphere are “strongly ormoderately affected by fragmentation of the river channels by damsand by water regulation resulting from reservoir operation, inter-basin diversion, and irrigation. . . . These conditions indicate thatmany types of river ecosystems have been lost and that the popula-tions of many riverine species have become highly fragmented.”1

The aim was not to fragment but to create a new order. In emerg-ing nation–states, in empires and colonies, in capitalist and com-munist societies, political elites applied new technologies of powerto rivers and lakes. Dreams of a hydraulic order sought to correctpast ills, to raise wealth, to impose control over nature and oth-ers. Floods would be stopped, rushing, wasting water would beharnessed with hydroelectric dams, and arid lands and reservoirswould be linked with irrigation systems. A new order of previouslyunimaginable scope was placed on rivers almost everywhere. Overthe course of the twentieth century, humans increased their annual

1. Dynesius and Nilsson, “Fragmentation and Flow,” p. 753. For Dynesius and Nilsson,“northern third of the world” refers to North America north of Mexico, Europe, and therepublics of the former Soviet Union.

1



2 Introduction

withdrawals from rivers and lakes ninefold.2 And still the searchfor order, on the Yangtze, on the Mekong, and on the Great Plains,continues.

Because so many dams have been built and so many rivers trans-formed, the historiography of water development has understand-ably focused on the factors driving development rather than onthose constraining it. From the role of state systems and geopoli-tics to the importance of monumentalism and modernism in damdesign, environmental historians have sought to understand theforces that have made dam development politically possible, eco-nomically feasible, and ideologically acceptable.3 Complementinga number of important studies focusing on fisheries, they have alsocatalogued a host of environmental consequences of river develop-ment, not only on fish, but also on changed flow regimes and on hu-man settlements.4 Relatively few national and international studieshave sought to resurrect and understand protest movements againstdam development.5 In general, environmental historians of riverdevelopment have emphasized the causes of development withoutquestioning what the alternatives might have been or whether, insimilar places at similar times, the outcomes were the same.

This book focuses on a river for which some of the choices madeabout how to impose order, to raise wealth, and to establish po-litical power took different forms than those used elsewhere. TheFraser River, located in British Columbia, Canada, is the most pro-ductive salmon river in the world. In terms of annual discharge,it is the third largest river on the Pacific coast of North Amer-ica, following the Columbia and the Yukon, and the third largestin Canada, after the Mackenzie and the St. Lawrence. Like manylarge North American rivers, the Fraser has inspired dreams of wa-terpower wealth and fisheries growth. Despite many attempts in

2. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, pp. 120–1. Estimates of long-term changes inhuman uses of freshwater may be found in L’vovich and White, “Use and Transforma-tion,” pp. 235–252.

3. Blatter and Ingram, Reflections on Water; Goldsmith and Hildyard, Social and Environ-mental Effects; Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress; Hundley, The Great Thirst; Jackson,Building the Ultimate Dam; Nelles, The Politics of Development; Pisani, To Reclaim aDivided West; Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods; Worster, Rivers of Empire.

4. McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem; Taylor, Making Salmon; White, The Organic Ma-chine.

5. Harvey, A Symbol of Wilderness; McCully, Silenced Rivers.



Introduction 3

the twentieth century, however, the main stem of the Fraser hasnever been dammed. The river has been fragmented, but far lessthan most. For students of the modern world and of the environ-ment, the Fraser River provides an important counterpoint to otherrivers in North America and beyond. Its many developmental sim-ilarities highlight its important differences. On the Fraser, fish havetriumphed, not dams, and this study seeks to explain why.

The answer turns on the political economic and transnationalforces that shaped the Fraser River in the twentieth century. Before1945, developers dammed tributaries to assist resource extractionactivities and to power urban growth. However, the limits of lo-cal markets and state intervention as well as the practical diffi-culties of dam development kept large dams off the Fraser. After1945, power demand soared and flood control became a majorgoal of public policy. Diverse interests promoted the benefits ofdamming the river. In this high stage of postwar development pres-sure, a fisheries conservation coalition, born of a fishing industryalliance, Canada–U.S. cooperation in the international regulationof the salmon fishery, and the intervention of fisheries scientists crit-ical of the effects of power development, held dams off the Fraser.Once Canada concluded an international treaty (1964) with theUnited States to dam the upper Columbia in coordination withAmerican projects downstream, the British Columbia governmentproceeded with another major power project on the northern PeaceRiver, which would meet domestic and export power demands fordecades. As a result, the Fraser became insulated from developmentpressures. Former dam proposals could no longer be justified eco-nomically or politically. Development was delayed, then displacedto other rivers.

A second argument of this book is that the fish vs. power de-bate not only delayed and displaced development, but also pro-duced various side effects on salmon, science, and society. Overthe course of the twentieth century, debates about how to man-age the river and the salmon bore consequences for salmon migra-tion when landslides blocked the main stem, for salmon spawn-ing grounds when developers dammed tributaries, and for salmonpopulations when restoration activities reclaimed areas for salmonrearing. Throughout the fish vs. power debate, scientists played an



4 Introduction

important role in analyzing potential development cases, providingexpert advice, and studying the relevant problems. Scientific insti-tutions were formed and strengthened in part to provide answersto the fish–power problem. The applied questions that scientistssought to answer directed their research along some avenues andnot others. In the background to the development conflict lay ba-sic questions about British Columbia’s future. The fish vs. powerdebate broke and forged coalitions among different social groups,regional interests, industries, and state bureaucracies. Because theFraser salmon fishery was international and because the develop-ment of the Fraser would affect other transboundary developmentson the Columbia, the fish vs. power debate expanded into nationaland international politics, challenging and provoking older defi-nitions of regionalism and regional self-interest. The debate overthe river and its fish, in short, climbed the banks of the Fraser andaffected and interacted with a range of problems and processesbeyond.

“You cannot step twice in the same river,” observed the pre-Socraticphilosopher Heraclitus, “for other waters are continually flow-ing on.”6 Writing a river’s history, then, seems a peculiarly elu-sive project, chasing a flow that cannot be constrained. Yet rivershave served as both metaphors and subjects of history for thou-sands of years. In Canada, rivers became routes for an unfoldingnation in an earlier historiography; today they appear more fre-quently in our writing as sites of pollution.7 Romantic highwayshave become sewers. In British Columbia, rivers flow through thecontemporary environmental imagination. They carry salmon thatare said to typify a region and its history. They connect people toa place and its past. Frequently British Columbians have tried tostep into the same river twice, forgetting how the river has changedand, more frequently still, how they have changed with it.

Before 1900, when this book begins, modernizing forces ofthe world economy and the politics of colonization had already

6. Quoted in Wheelwright, Heraclitus, p. 29.7. The classic statement of the Laurentian interpretation of Canadian history is found in

Creighton, The Commercial Empire; New, “The Great River Theory.”



Introduction 5

changed the river and its peoples. To gain a long-term perspec-tive that helps to place the development conflicts of the twentiethcentury in context, it is well to describe some of the natural pro-cesses that have made this river and to reflect upon the forces thatturned the Fraser into a resettlement corridor.

The Fraser River drains a large basin, 250,000 km2 (1 km2 =0.3861 miles2), about a quarter of British Columbia, or slightlylarger than the land area of the United Kingdom (see Map 1). Since1952, when the Nechako River was partially diverted to the coast,the drainage area has practically decreased to about 233,000 km2.8

The Fraser originates in the western slopes of the Rocky Mountainsnear Mount Robson and curves in a long s-shaped southwesternarc toward the delta, 1375 km away. Over the seasonal cycle, theriver’s mean flow, measured near the river mouth, changes dramat-ically from 750 m3/s in the winter to 11,500 m3/s in the summer(1 m3 = 1.308 yd3).9 From mountainous slopes in the westernRockies, the river cuts deeply into interior plateaus and enters awide valley near the delta. In its course, the river passes throughseveral different ecological regions shaped by varying conditions ofmoisture and temperature: evergreen forests of pine, spruce, andfir on the western slopes of the Rockies, dry plateau and sagebrushcountry in some sections of the interior, and dense rain forests onthe coast. Each of these areas provide rich and varied habitat forsalmon. Five species of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus) spawn inthe Fraser basin: chinook (O. tshawytscha), chum (O. keta), coho(O. kisutch), pink (O. gorbuscha), and sockeye (O. nerka).10 Pacificsalmon are anadromous. They spend their early life in freshwaterenvironments, usually food-rich lakes or small streams, migrate tothe ocean for the bulk of their life history, and, in their final phase,return to their natal streams to spawn and die.11

8. Church, “The Future of the Fraser River.”9. Dorcey, “Water”; Moore, “Hydrology and Water Supply,” Vol. 2, pp. 3–18, 21–40;

Northcote and Larkin, “The Fraser River.”10. I deliberately leave steelhead/rainbow trout out of this listing, following Groot and Mar-

golis: “The scientific names for steelhead/rainbow trout (Salmo gairdneri) and cutthroattrout (Salmo clarki clarki) have recently been changed. They are now included in thegenus Oncorhynchus and have been renamed O. mykiss and O. clarki, respectively. . . .

They are still known as trout rather than salmon.” Groot and Margolis, Pacific SalmonLife Histories, p. x.

11. Ibid.



Map

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aser

Bas

inan

dB

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shC

olum

bia.

6



Introduction 7

The Fraser River entered the modern world system relativelylate. Native peoples had lived along the river for millennia anddeveloped complex social worlds around the primary resource ofsalmon. In the lower sections of the river, salmon and a diverse ma-rine environment provided the foundations for some of the largestnative populations in Canada before contact. Coastal contacts be-tween native peoples and European explorers and traders occurredonly in the late eighteenth century – more than 200 years laterthan similar encounters in Eastern Canada. Smallpox, spreadingnorth and west from the Plains in 1782, preceded direct contactin many areas of the coast and Fraser River and had devastatingconsequences for native groups.12 Land-based contacts, driven byan expansive continental fur trade from the East, were not realizeduntil the early nineteenth century when Simon Fraser descended theriver that would later bear his name, mistaking it for the Columbia.Although the treacherous narrows of the Fraser Canyon ruled outthe use of the river as a possible transportation corridor for the furtrade, fur-trade posts were established in the interior and near thedelta. These early links connected peoples and environments of theFraser Basin to a continental trade network and to the demandsof international markets, but they did not displace native peoples,nor colonize them.

A gold rush up the Fraser River in 1858 changed all of this. Ina matter of months, around 20,000 miners, mainly from Califor-nia, but also from eastern North America and Asia, traveled upthe river, staked claims, and developed placer mining sites. Nu-merous conflicts with native peoples along the river ensued. In thesame year, the British created the colony of British Columbia toexert control. The Fraser Basin lay within the territory ceded bythe United States to the British in the Treaty of Washington (1846).The British established a settlement system, built a wagon roadalong the river from Yale (the head of navigation) north to theCariboo gold fields, surveyed town sites, and generally imposed anew system of law and order.13 Missionaries of several denomina-tions seeking cultural and religious change followed. As part of this

12. Harris, “Voices of Smallpox Around the Strait of Georgia,” in The Resettlement, pp. 3–30.

13. Loo, Making Law.



8 Introduction

resettlement process, in the second half of the nineteenth centurynative peoples were confined to margins of their traditional terri-tories on reserves; unlike in many other parts of Canada, here notreaties were signed.14 In a very short period of time, the river hadbeen colonized, connected to a global empire, and exploited for ahigh-value, low-bulk commodity export.

The Fraser River, nevertheless, remained on the margins. Al-though small resource industries of lumbering, fishing, agriculture,and mining developed slowly, particularly in the lower sections ofthe river, the lack of substantial local markets and the prohibitivecosts of transportion to larger centers limited opportunities. It wasnot until the late nineteenth century, after the completion of theCanadian Pacific Railway, a transcontinental railroad, that the bar-riers of distance began to diminish. From the east, the railroad fol-lowed the Thompson River, a Fraser tributary. At the confluenceof the Thompson and the Fraser at Lytton, the railroad cut south,following the Fraser to the coast, before terminating north of thedelta, on Burrard Inlet. At its terminus, finally reached in 1887, therailroad provided the economic foundations for a new city, Van-couver. At the coast, the railroad connected with steamships. Alongits tracks, telegraph lines carried information. Over the years, a se-ries of spur lines ran up tributary valleys that bisected the mainline. In the early twentieth century, a second transcontinental linefollowed the river. The railroad, however, did not move the FraserRiver from the margins to the center. Beyond rail lines, travel andshipment in the Fraser Basin remained difficult. But the railroaddid connect the region to a new East–West axis across northernNorth America that promised considerable political and economicchange.

The construction of the railroad had been a fundamental con-dition of British Columbia’s entrance into Canadian Confedera-tion in 1871. Before that time, the mainland colony had beenunited with Vancouver Island in 1866. By entering Confedera-tion, British Columbia became subject to the constitution of acomplex federal state. By the terms of the British North AmericaAct, 1867, provinces and the federal government gained different

14. Harris, Making Native Space.



Introduction 9

responsibilities and powers.15 Section 109 of the Act grantedprovinces jurisdiction over lands and resources, and Sections 92(5)and 92(13) granted the right to manage and sell public lands and tohold jurisdiction over property and civil rights. The federal govern-ment, however, retained jurisdiction over ocean-based and anadro-mous fisheries, navigable and international rivers, and significantpowers related to natural resources under Section 91, particularlyas these related to trade and commerce, taxation policy, and, mostbroadly, “Peace, Order and good Government.” Further, a rail-way belt, set aside to help finance the transcontinental railroad,remained under federal authority. The belt extended 20 miles on ei-ther side of the main line and therefore encompassed a wide sectionof the Fraser Basin. Administration of the railway belt remainedcontested for many years.16 These divisions of authority producedvarious conflicts within the state system over the administrationand regulation of shared or contested resources – conflicts thatprivate interests happily exploited.17

The railroad provided relatively cheap, reliable transport thatunderwrote a new era of resource development in the Fraser Basin.The primary exports from the basin were forest products and fish.Lumbering centered on the lower river and its environs, whereasfishing occurred near the delta and focused primarily on sockeyesalmon. Agricultural commodities wrested from the rich soils ofthe Fraser Valley reached local markets in resource towns and theexpanding commercial center of Vancouver. Before the turn of thecentury, cattle-ranching operations moved into sections of the mid-dle basin, along the Thompson River. Rapidly, the railroad openednew resource development opportunities in the Fraser Basin andmade it into an export-oriented, staple-producing region.

At the edge of the transcontinental railroad system, Vancouveremerged as the primary Pacific metropolis of Canada, organizingthe provincial resource trades and providing transportation servicesfor a vast hinterland. Within the city, lumber mills cut timber fromlogs floated by river and sea and prepared them for shipment by

15. The British North America Act, 1867, Statutes of the United Kingdom, 30–1, Victoria,Chapter 3.

16. Cail, Land, Man, and the Law, pp. 111–52.17. Hessing and Howlett, Canadian Natural Resource, p. 56.



10 Introduction

rail and barge. To the south, on the river, an increasing number ofcanneries produced an expanding pack of sockeye salmon. Cases oftinned fish were moved by rail to consumers in the east and abroad.Although manufacturing remained limited in the city before 1900,the city grew rapidly. Vancouver’s population more than doubledfrom a modest 13,709 in 1891 to almost 30,000 by the turn ofthe century. In the next decade, the city’s population quadrupled.By 1931, the city and surrounding municipalities reached nearlya quarter of a million; by 1951, over half a million – or nearlyone-half of the entire provincial population.18 A city of this sizeand regional importance provided a considerable market for theresource economy of the province and also developed a substantialservice industry and manufacturing base.

Fish versus Power is an environmental history of a contested river.To understand that contest, I build upon and seek connectionsamong three bodies of scholarship.

First, any study of primary resource development in Canada mustcome to terms with the staples tradition of Canadian political econ-omy. This tradition can be traced to the foundational economichistories of Harold Innis on Canada’s early export trades of fur,cod, and minerals. Innis analyzed the “penetrative powers of theprice system” across a vast northern realm and worked out theeffects of staple commodity exploitation on economic and socialrelationships in hinterland regions.19 He approached these prob-lems with the assumption that economic activity was linked to andembedded in environmental and spatial contexts. Although Innis’swork has been widely praised and remains important, those whohave sought to emulate his approach and concerns have done soin broadly different ways. In one direction, political economistshave largely abandoned an historical approach, but have givengreater theoretical precision to Innis’s ideas and emphasized the in-herent difficulties of industrialization in a staple-driven peripheral

18. McDonald, Making Vancouver; Wynn, “The Rise of Vancouver,” p. 69.19. For a general introduction to Innis’s work and a collection of his essays, see Drache, ed.,

Staples, Markets and Cultural Change (Kingston/Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UniversityPress, 1995).



Introduction 11

economy.20 In Canadian historical writing, the staples approachhas received scattered treatment in the past half century; the mostnotable reinvigoration has appeared in the work of H. V. Nelles,who connected comparative studies of staple trades to analyses ofthe state and regulation.21 In historical geography, the staples tra-dition attracted considerable interest in the 1970s and 1980s andemphasized the settlement patterns associated with staple trades,as well as the environmental contexts and effects of commodity ex-ploitation.22 My own approach analyzes the connections betweenwhat Nelles has called the “politics of development” in a federalstate and the environmental histories of contested resources.

Second, a body of work in transnational environmental historyhas raised important questions. Although the term transnationalhas come to mean different things across the social sciences andhumanities, in environmental history it refers to the connectionsmade between humans and environments across national bound-aries. Ian Tyrrell’s recent study of environmental exchanges be-tween Australia and California, for example, explores the complexinterplay of cultural meanings and ecological processes at vari-ous spatial scales.23 The problems and practices of a transnationalapproach have attracted the greatest attention in American histori-ography and challenged persistent notions of American exception-alism.24 Beyond the United States, explicit reference to transna-tional concerns has been less evident, although there is no doubtthat world history scholarship and numerous national (includingCanadian) historiographies have treated transnational problemsimplicitly, or as a matter of course. Although this book focuses onone river basin, prescribed political or bioregional units of anal-ysis do not confine it. I address the local, national, and interna-tional forces that have shaped the river and have been shaped by it.By making the transnational aspects explicit, I suggest the impor-tance of understanding seemingly local or seemingly international

20. Drache, “Celebrating Innis: The Man, The Legacy and Our Future,” in ibid., pp. xiii–lix.21. Nelles, The Politics of Development.22. Harris, “Industry and the Good Life Around Idaho Peak,” Canadian Historical Review

66(3) (1985): 315–43; Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade; Wynn, Timber Colony.23. Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods.24. Tyrrell, “Making Nations/Making States”; idem, “American Exceptionalism”; White,

“The Nationalization of Nature.”



12 Introduction

environmental questions at different and frequently intersectingspatial scales.

Third, recent work in environmental history has drawn connec-tions among environmental change and the ideas and practices ofscience.25 Broadly, environmental historians have borrowed selec-tively from recent constructivist approaches to the history and so-ciology of science that emphasize the contextual aspects of knowl-edge and practice. They have extended the range of problems underanalysis, however, by linking scientific ideas and practices to chang-ing environmental contexts.26 Joseph Taylor’s environmental his-tory of the Columbia River fisheries, for example, identifies theagency of scientific knowledge in refashioning salmon populationsunder various fish cultural techniques.27 Nancy Langston’s envi-ronmental history of forestry in the U.S. West, on the other hand,demonstrates the mutually constitutive roles of changing scientificideas and management practices acting on and changing within ashifting forest regime.28 This book builds on this previous workby linking environmental history and the history of science, whilealso attending to the institutional and political contexts of scientificknowledge.

This book also depends critically on a rich body of local schol-arship. Perhaps the first historian of fish and power was HenryDoyle, a British Columbia canner and self-taught scholar who pro-duced a history of the Pacific Coast fisheries in the mid-1950s in thehopes of educating the public and warding off the power threat.Although he tried to publish this history, no press would take it,chiefly because of its heterodox theories of salmon biology, butalso perhaps because of its fierce denunciations of the power inter-est.29 Since Doyle’s polemic, the subject has passed. Because thereare no dams on the Fraser, presumably, their absence requires lit-tle explanation. Historians of hydroelectricity have focused on therivers on which development did take place.30 Historians of British25. White, “Environmental History.” 26. Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge.27. Taylor, Making Salmon. 28. Langston, Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares.29. UBC Special Collections and Archives (hereafter UBC), Doyle, Henry Papers, The Rise

and Decline of the Pacific Salmon Fisheries, 2 vols. (nd, 1957?), unpublished MS.30. For the early period, see Armstrong and Nelles, Monopoly’s Moment; Roy, “The British

Columbia Electric Railway Company”; idem, “The Fine Arts of Lobbying”; idem,“The Illumination of Victoria”; idem, “The British Columbia Electric Railway andIts Street Railway Employees”; idem, “Direct Management from Abroad.” For the



Introduction 13

Columbia’s fisheries have provided a number of excellent studieson the role of business in the commercial fishery and on aspectsof ethnic and native history.31 Few have investigated how nearlythe industry came to an end in the face of dam development.32 Interms of the environmental conditions of the fishery, my attentionis focused on the river. Although important studies over the pastdecade have provided new ideas and evidence about the effects ofchanging ocean conditions on salmon life history and productivity,much uncertainty remains around specific instances of environmen-tal change, such as the effects of the Hells Gate slides.33

The Fraser’s present and future have also shaped my questionsand concerns. The Fraser River’s salmon fisheries, like so many fish-eries worldwide, have experienced sharp declines in recent years.In 1999, the sockeye fishery was canceled for the first time. Con-currently, British Columbians and North Americans increased theirappetite for energy. As California struggles to secure energy sup-plies, British Columbia and other Canadian jurisdictions exportsurplus power and imagine ways to develop and sell more.34 Witha faltering fishery on the Fraser and increasing energy demands,can calls for power dams on the Fraser be far behind? Today, theFraser provides a counterexample to many rivers elsewhere, but itstill has the potential to follow more familiar patterns.

Fish versus Power opens with a tragedy: a series of devastatinglandslides in 1912–14 that dammed the river in a narrow gorgenamed Hells Gate. The slides cut off the migration path of the

postwar period, see Bocking, Mighty River; Mitchell, WAC Bennett; Mouat, The Busi-ness of Power; Swainson, Conflict Over the Columbia; Wedley, “The Wenner-Gren andPeace River Power Development Programs”; idem, “Infrastructure and Resources”;Williston and Keller, Forests, Power and Policy, especially Chapter 2, “The Two RiversPolicy.”

31. Harris, Fish, Law, and Colonialism; Johnstone, The Aquatic Explorers; Meggs, Salmon;Muszynski, Cheap Wage Labour; Newell, Tangled Webs; idem, The Development of thePacific Salmon-Canning Industry; idem, “The Politics of Food in World War II”; idem,“Dispersal and Concentration”; idem, “The Rationality of Mechanization”; Ralston,“Patterns of Trade”; Reid, “Company Mergers.”

32. Writers reaching a broader popular audience have raised some of these questions, how-ever: see Bocking, Mighty River; Roos, Restoring Fraser River Salmon.

33. For an important statement on this area of research, see Beamish and Bouillon, “Pacificsalmon production trends.”

34. Froschauer, White Gold.



14 Introduction

largest salmon run ever recorded. The Fraser Canyon filled withthe writhing red bodies of spawning salmon, visible for 10 milesbeneath the obstruction. In combination with other factors, theslides precipitated the collapse of the Fraser fisheries. For thirtyyears salmon runs fell below a quarter of their historic levels. Na-tive peoples, commercial fishers, fisheries scientists, and regulatorsadjusted to the new conditions and sought solutions. Chapter 1examines the causes and consequences of the slides and lays thefoundations for understanding subsequent attempts to restore theriver.

Visions of a transformed river abounded after 1900. Power in-terests surveyed the river’s flow, sited dams, and promoted develop-ment schemes. Small dams rose on tributaries to facilitate mining,forestry, and hydroelectric concerns. Before 1940 these projectsproceeded with little regulatory oversight or constraint and had ad-verse effects on important spawning grounds. Main-stem projects,however, remained unrealized. Weak market demand and the fo-cused development projects of a monopoly utility in the metropoli-tan regions of the province did not provide the economic condi-tions to support major dam projects. No government interventionin power development propelled a building program. Chapter 2investigates the course of dam development on Fraser tributariesin the early twentieth century and explains why the main stemremained undammed.

After the decline of the Fraser sockeye runs following the HellsGate slides, Canada and the United States negotiated the PacificSalmon Convention (1937) to establish a catch agreement andto launch a scientific restoration program under the InternationalPacific Salmon Fisheries Commission. Following scientific investi-gations that identified blockage problems at Hells Gate, the Interna-tional Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission built fishways to over-come the difficulties. Here was the first of several instances in whichthe transnational nature of the resource affected local environmen-tal management. Just as pressure built in British Columbia to pro-ceed with major dam development on the Fraser in the late 1940s,salmon runs rebounded and Hells Gate emerged as a model of thecosts of development. In Chapter 3, I examine the development



Introduction 15

of a transnational research program, the restoration of Hells Gate,and the local and international controversies in which this programbecame embroiled. I argue that the construction of the fishwayscreated a significant claim to the Fraser Canyon just as politicalpressures mounted to dam the Fraser.

The growth of British Columbia’s economy during World War IIinspired new demand for electrical energy, public power develop-ment, and expansion into hinterland regions. Canadians looked en-viously upon regional growth in the U.S. Pacific Northwest spurredby dam projects and associated industrial development. Calls weremade to nationalize the power sector, to dam the Fraser, and to drivethe region into a new industrial phase. Urban centers expanded,provincial population grew, and the resource economy prepared fora postwar development phase. In response, BC Electric launcheda major building campaign and new developers entered the scenein the hopes of harnessing British Columbia’s waterpower wealth.Chapter 4 suggests how the context of a world war and the mount-ing demands of the postwar period transformed the possibilities fordevelopment on the Fraser.

Overlapping resource demands made the Fraser River a con-tested site of development politics. By the late 1940s, the fish vs.power debate had begun. In the first major dispute of the post-war era, the Aluminum Company of Canada successfully obtainedrights to develop the Nechako River, an upper-basin tributary. Withstrong provincial support, the Aluminum Company’s developmentscheme promised to create the third largest city in the province,propel industrial development in the provincial North, and affectsalmon runs minimally. The fisheries defense proved scattered andcontradictory. As the Aluminum Company’s project rose in theNorth, flooding out traplines and burial grounds of Cheslatta T’ennatives and diverting the Nechako with consequences for salmonruns downstream, the development agenda appeared unstoppable.In Chapter 5, I examine the politics of conflicting resource de-mands and demonstrate how the aluminum industry and provincialgovernment co-opted fisheries protest and federal opposition. De-spite the loss of fisheries interests in this case, the Aluminum Com-pany dispute provided the opportunity for the organization of a

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